Review Summary: only waking up after the third alarm goes off
Saint Molly drags its feet through the sludge of quotidian routine painfully slowly. Its head aches as the industrial screeches and unexplained field recordings interrupt its train of thought with the reckless disregard of a thousand disgruntled customers. It keeps pushing forward, though, because the world is a daydream and the only way to stay attentive is to perforate the warped ambiance with a lo-fi hook about…whatever. It’s immaterial.
The record is one long, continuous yawn, and it’s contagious. The guitars hang on lazily with one arm like a prisoner being pulled along on a horse and in
Cherry Coke, the lethargy infects the children enlisted to perform backing vocals, turning them into the sleepiest church choir ever put to tape. There are some lively moments (see: the recording of ‘Happy Birthday’ in
Doctors Visit) but even then, they’re just memories that swing through unprovoked, and then it’s back to the drudgery of the present day.
Suburban alienation and despondency in this record is accentuated by the constant detours it takes. More than anything, every little pipe dream in
Saint Molly helps stamp out its identity as that kid that zones out mid-conversation; tired, bored and aloof. About half way through its run-time,
Bathtub Water ham-fistedly morphs into the fuzzy tape recording of a completely different song and then reverts back into its original form as if nothing had happened.
Sorry, what was that? It seems to ask. You’ll just have to get used to it.
Sometimes, at least, the album's myriad distractions seem completely warranted. It actually appears to care during
Tell Your Family Hi From Me and
Dresser, but in both instances, something immediate catches its attention. In the former, a scuffle on the other side of the street warrants a sliver of indifferent consideration and in the latter, a sharp burst of radio funk/soul snaps it out of its malaise. I can’t decide whether this absent-minded aesthetic is to its detriment or to its favour, but I am certain of the record’s creative merit and oddball disposition, does that count?
Of course it does.
Saint Molly is content with being enough. By the time it’s finished, the record has shuffled forward only centimetres in the sludge. It lives anywhere but the present and its ambitions run only as far as a visit to the
Beauty Salon or a meal in
Fast Food Heaven. I think it makes sense, then, that
Saint Molly is fine with being a 3.5 (whatever that means), because that’s all that it tries to be, which is, uhhhh…
Wait, what was I saying again?
